The distinguished transplant nephrologist Gabe Danovitch and the lawyer and medical ethicist Alexander Capron respond to the recent WSJ oped of the late Gary Becker:
We shouldn't treat kidneys as commodities by ALEXANDER M. CAPRON AND GABRIEL DANOVITCH
"buying and selling organs is a dangerous and misguided game, no matter how exalted the theorists playing it or how seemingly straightforward their calculations."
...
"Turning organs into a financial commodity would undermine the safety and efficacy of the system now in place and would not necessarily increase the supply. The United States has served as a model for ethical organ transplantation, and abandoning our long-standing prohibition on buying organs would lead us into an ethical minefield with negative repercussions the world over."
We shouldn't treat kidneys as commodities by ALEXANDER M. CAPRON AND GABRIEL DANOVITCH
"buying and selling organs is a dangerous and misguided game, no matter how exalted the theorists playing it or how seemingly straightforward their calculations."
...
"Turning organs into a financial commodity would undermine the safety and efficacy of the system now in place and would not necessarily increase the supply. The United States has served as a model for ethical organ transplantation, and abandoning our long-standing prohibition on buying organs would lead us into an ethical minefield with negative repercussions the world over."
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2 comments:
I argue that referencing the tragic outcomes of black market sales as a reason to block a pilot program for the sale of kidneys is disingenuous and misleading.
Do we pat ourselves on the back that we have an altruistic society while we allow, for no other reason other than a barrier to supply, 12-15 ESRD citizens to die each day? You can be sure our headlines would be rife with condemnation if the same number of prisoners died each day awaiting their fate. Why condemn our kidney transplant patients to death? Why do they deserve this fate?
"... and would not necessarily increase the supply..." really?!
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